TAIPEI, Taiwan--Hewlett-Packard will open
20 "e-services bazaars" to help
other companies build new wireless services and in
the process help proliferate HP's technology, said CEO
Carly Fiorina.

The centers will be a "venue for creating mobile
e-services" such as
personal banking or stock trading for wireless
devices, Fiorina told the
audience at the 2000 World Congress on Information
Technology, a three-day conference here dedicated to
examining the future of
information technology. The conference opened today with a speech from Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian.

"Services" has become the guiding principle in HP's
strategic plans. In the
future, Fiorina said, everything that can be sold will be sold as a
service via the
Internet--"any asset that can be turned into a service on
the Web."

HP's role in this economy will largely lie in selling
hardware, providing
technical and marketing expertise, and putting
together financing for
companies creating these services, she said.

"We opened the first one in Singapore six months ago.
Next, we will open
centers in Bejing, Tokyo and Bangkok in the next six
months," she said,
while a center in Bangalore, India, will follow. Of the 200
companies that have already
signed up to participate on projects in HP's
e-services bazaar, 100 are based in Asia.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based technology giant will
also manufacture
information appliances for this new era. In the
fall, HP and Swatch will
introduce a wired wristwatch that will permit wearers
to conduct e-commerce. In ongoing trials in
Switzerland, wearers
can pass through a train station turnstile without
paying; the watch charges
their bank accounts for the cost of the ticket.

HP will also release a "learning appliance," Fiorina said.
Approximately the
size of a personal calculator, the learning appliance
will be hooked up to the
Internet and will allow students to rapidly
connect to sites that
relate to their class work. The appliance and its
content will be
specifically geared toward middle schools.

Fiorina and Chen were among numerous
high-profile speakers
at the conference. So far, the dominant themes have
been the growing
importance of e-commerce and the need to adapt public
policy to a borderless
world. The word "change" seems to pop up every 30
seconds.

Examining high-tech evolution
Although many of the speeches invariably contain
reheated catchphrases
about the transformative powers of the Internet, the
speakers are providing
some interesting insights into different ways high technology is
evolving.

Lester Thurow, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of
Management, predicted that Egypt would in a short time
become a center for
programmers, just as Bangalore has.

The country has "a lot of unemployed, educated
engineers, and even the level
of English is pretty high," he said.

On a different note, he predicted that traffic
patterns will
change and the value of retail real estate will
plummet with the growth of
e-commerce.

"You'd better sell your shopping centers," he said.
"In 2010, half of the
retail stores in America will be closed because half
of all purchasing will
occur online."

Chen, meanwhile, said that Taiwan will put
increasing emphasis on
environmental issues.

"We have decided to make Taiwan a clean silicon
island," he said.

Taiwan is well-known for its environmental problems,
including notoriously thick air. One of the major consumer items is electronic air filtration systems.

Stan Shih, CEO of Taiwan's Acer Group, reiterated an
increasingly common
theme among PC executives, namely that companies will
have to strike
alliances to survive. PC companies, for instance, will
have to bind closer
to content and service providers.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, Cisco CEO John Chambers, Red
Hat chairman Robert
Young, and Tadashi Sekizawa, chairman of Fujitsu, are
some of the speakers
slated for tomorrow.